


Ways Crime and Punishment Didn't End

by windfallswest



Category: Prestuplenie i nakazanie | Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crack, M/M, Needs More Dinosaurs!, World Domination, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-04 00:03:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17293853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windfallswest/pseuds/windfallswest
Summary: "Porfiry Petrovitch!" shouts a voice from above. Porfiry whirls and sees a figure with a familiar head of unruly black hair seated on the scaly withers of the nearest mountainous reptile.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally intended to be a Five Things; but I started it in high school, it's been stalled at three for over ten years, I no longer even remember anything about these characters, and my surviving notes are just a list of head-castings of SGA actors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started with what I felt was the canonical lack in most pressing need of being addressed. (Because if you're going to write an arbitrary ending, dammit, you should at least write one with some punch.)

And then _splurunch_ goes the police station. Porfiry watches in awe and horror as the pack of Apatosaurs continue their migration through Petersburg, leaving mangled wreckage in their wake.

"Porfiry Petrovitch!" shouts a voice from above. Porfiry whirls and sees a figure with a familiar head of unruly black hair seated on the scaly withers of the nearest mountainous reptile.

"It is a sign, Porfiry Petrovitch! Renounce your ruined society and outdated code of ethics! Join me! We shall spend our days on the backs of these fantastic beasts and live together the lives of nomad herders. Outside of human law, Porfiry Petrovitch! Far from the limits of this unthinking mass of ordinary men!"

"But...but—but!" Porfiry pants even as he begins to scramble up a pile of rubble, scarcely worse than the tenement it was five minutes ago. The impossible lizard upon which is seated Raskolnikov comes to a stop. Raskolnikov strokes its neck with a curious gentleness while they wait for Porfiry to wheeze his way over. 

"This cannot be safe, you know, Rodion Romanovitch," Porfiry informs him, taking Raskolnikov's proffered hand up. "I mean, look at them! They're destroying the entire city!"

Raskolnikov smiles. It strikes Porfiry that this is the first time he has taken note of the colour of Raskolnikov's eyes. There is for once no fever glazing them with half-sane heat, nor even the visionary force which had on occasion seized them during his interviews with Porfiry. The air is crisp here, above the vulgar death spasms of Petersburg, and Raskolnikov's mouth tastes like rebirth. Porfiry feels lighter, as though perhaps he is closer to the answer than before, kissing to the unpatterned background lowing of Apatosaurs. 

Theirs lurches into motion once more, jarring them apart. Porfiry thinks his eyes are wide as saucers. His heart is pounding at such a decibel level that it overwhelms the leviathans' earth-shaking steps.

"Where's are we going, anyway?" demands Porfiry. Raskolnikov is a gentleman and does not comment on the octave in which this query is delivered. 

"Atlantis," replies Raskolnikov.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My natural perversity inclines me to think that this one is most in line with the canon, even though it takes perhaps less regard for setting and suchlike than the previous. I shall make mention of my twelfth-grade English teacher here, because she's the one who asked Porfiry's question (though I'm sure she'd be horrified by what I did with it).

Porfiry held himself back for a week before he went to see him. Patience should not have been so difficult. It had been an especially stimulating contest, yes, and one that Porfiry had quite enjoyed; but now it had ended, everything folding nicely into Porfiry's waiting hand. Still, there was something which did not sit right about the final play. Porfiry had spent the past week alternately stoking his irritation to the point almost of fury and withdrawn in a most inconvenient and wracking self-doubt. His house-staff despaired of him.

There was no use, Porfiry had reminded himself time and time again, in charging in too soon and seeming over-eager. The matter had already been resolved, after all; there were only the minor loose ends of trials and sentencing to be got through. There was no need for haste, for the motherland's judicial wheels spun slowly; and Porfiry's professionalism demanded that he not make a blundering, amateurish mess. He was an educated man, a man of reason. Porfiry repeated that to himself as he stared into Raskolnikov's blue eyes and the urge to lift the man by his dingy shirtfront and slam him against the wall became overpowering. Raskolnikov, Porfiry recalled, seemed to extract a feverish glee from alienating people. His eyes gazed up into Porfiry's own, and no matter how long Porfiry stood there, thwarted by the iron bars that stood like a slatted curtain from the floor to the ceiling, no answers bobbed from the wells of his pupils to the surface.

"It escapes me," Porfiry managed at last. "Please; explain."

He received no reply other than a shifting of Raskolnikov's blank expression to one of utter despair. Porfiry found his hands throttling the bars of Raskolnikov's cell.

"Why, Rodion Romanovitch? Tell me why."

"What does it matter to you, Porfiry Petrovitch? What does it matter to anyone?" The abject hopelessness on Raskolnikov's face was suddenly maddening; could he not at least summon up the energy to be bitter? "The trial is all that is left. The truth, I suppose, will come out there."

And again, still, under it all was that same unreadable introversion that had tortured Porfiry all along; Porfiry's doubt struck him once more with all the force of a breaking wave. He clung now to the bars for support as the surf crashed in his ears.

"Damn you, damn you," he muttered. "Why didn't you come to me?"

The world flipped vertiginously in Raskolnikov's dawning stare and Porfiry was the inmate hanging pathetically on the slats of his cage, begging to be set free. Porfiry's head spun. Wrong, all wrong. Nothing was what he'd expected it to be. It was impossible to escape the possibility that he had been outsmarted. Porfiry released the bars as though they had scorched him and unceremoniously fled Raskolnikov's devastatingly hollow presence.

 

The next time Porfiry Petrovitch came, his thinning brown hair was in even worse disarray than last time. The eyes behind his glasses blinked owlishly at Raskolnikov; it was apparent that he had abandoned for the time his scrupulously crafted, genteel veneer. That puzzled Raskolnikov, almost more than the words he dropped to linger with the stenches of the gaol. They _ting_ ed like wind chimes against the other words Porfiry had abandoned to hover unceasingly in the air.

_What do you know? What don't you want me to find out?_

_You vex me, Rodion Romanovitch; I do not understand._

_Why didn't you tell_ me?

 

"This is a waste." Profiry came to a dead stop, transfixed by the prisoner, silent in his cell. He was tired enough to forget that Russian was not his first language. "You do nothing here, Rodion Romanovitch."

"Porfiry Petrovitch, is that not the point of incarceration?" The bitter edge in Raskolnikov's tone was a relief, even though it cut too deeply. Porfiry retreated before he asked why Raskolnikov had ever heeded his advice.

 

"Rodion Romanovitch, you are hopeless. I see that now." Porfiry passed back and forth in front of Raskolnikov's cell. "There was a flaw in your theory. Ax-murdering old women is no good. But you are almost no longer there."

Porfiry came to a stop and looked measuringly at Raskolnikov. Raskolnikov was lying on a dirt-greyed pallet, the mouldering straw of which protruded from the seams. His face was as Porfiry had always known it, sallow and sunken, but lacking either fire or fever or the absolute conviction with which Porfiry had first become acquainted.

"You are afraid," he accused the motionless, supine figure. "You fear life, Rodion Romanovitch?" Porfiry hounded the still, still man. Nothing but the stillness could be seen in this deplorable half-light. "You do not want to care."

Nothing, nothing. Porfiry muttered an exclamation of disgust.

"So why do I?" he asked himself as he turned away. 

 

The last time Porfiry went to visit Raskolnikov in jail, he did so decisively. What Raskolnikov needed was, as it is colloquially termed, a swift kick in the pants. And so when Porfiry unlocked Raskolnikov's cell with the key he no longer had every right to and dragged Raskolnikov to a waiting carriage, he ignored Raskolnikov's gabbling protest. He let the affronted string of words run over his ears in waves, breaking and sloughing with Raskolnikov's breath.

"Is this another trap, Porfiry Petrovitch?" Raskolnikov demanded from the centre of Porfiry's parlour, where he had finally balked. 

"What need have I to trap you?" In the light, Porfiry could only shake his head over Raskolnikov's appearance. Raskolnikov was not a man built to be emaciated, but it was painfully obvious that no one had been feeding him properly for the past two years. "Now if you would please go and wash. Pardon me, but you have accumulated a slight odour, Rodion Romanovitch."

"You cannot do this! You are a police officer!" Raskolnikov protested. 

"As a matter of fact, I am no longer working with the police. But we can speak of that later. Yes."

At long last, Porfiry managed to shoo his guest upstairs, where there was hopefully no-one to shout at. Porfiry heaved a heavy sigh and ascended himself to his bed chamber, assiduously avoiding meeting the martyred eyes of his somewhat neglected servants. 

 

Porfiry stared at Raskolnikov.

Raskolnikov stared at Porfiry.

"It is an exciting new opportunity. I am most eager," Porfiry observed into the silence following Raskolnikov's last shout. It had so far been a very long morning, and promised to become longer, as it had not yet struck ten. Porfiry was sourly on his way to concluding that he and Raskolnikov functioned together much better when they were working at cross-purposes. "I think you would enjoy it."

"Tell me, and I will be the judge," Raskolnikov snapped.

"Well," Porfiry answered, unmoved by his clipped tones, "first, I plan to seize control of France." 

Raskolnikov looked blankly at him for a moment, then loosed a delighted laugh.

 

Raskolnikov stood on the balcony and inhaled deeply. Lantern light gleamed warmly on the waters of the Seine. A balmy summer breeze blew away the cobwebbing of names and faces, leaving behind only an underlying layer of exhilaration. It was almost as heady as the feel of Porfiry behind him, watching him, always watching, except when Raskolnikov had him in his hands, gasping and panting, myopic eyes scrunched tightly closed. Raskolnikov shut his eyes and discovered he believed. By the time he was through, Napoleon would look like an organ-grinder.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Braaaaaaaaaaains

Porfiry: Rodion Romanovitch, I require your assistance.

Rodya: What with? I have already given my confession. Why do you not leave me in peace?

Porfiry: Aid me in combatting the zombies.

Rodya: What need should you have of my assistance? Are there not a fine police force and army for such disturbances? 

Porfiry: But, Rodion Romanovitch, they are seeking to take over the world!

Rodya: So? How are they different than the defective simpletons who run the world now? Consider it, Porfiry Petrovich. Is this not a sign? A great opportunity? An unthinking, unkilllable horde. Harnessed, they could bring me to absolute dominion over the globe. 

Porfiry: But you cannot do that!

Rodya: And what do you doubt, Porfiry Petrovich? My ability to achieve my goals? My willingness to transgress the puerile strictures of common morality? Consider well, Porfiry Petrovich. Will you stand in my way—or by my side? If my enterprise holds no interest for you, then return to your parlour and wait for the monstrous undead to consume your soft and rotting brain.

Porfiry: Rodion Romanivitch, how you talk me into such things...


End file.
